the house without windows by barbara newhall follett

The author's own (presumably) short life was deeply troubled - her father abandoned the family a couple of years after the book's publication (by which time she had published another novel), and she and her mother faced poverty, against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Eepersip (I don't know how the author came up with this odd name) runs away from her parents' house to live in nature, making friends with animals and living on berries and roots - this description might make the novel sound either twee or ridiculous, but this is beautifully written, full of the joys of the natural world as seen through the eyes of an introverted child for whom the benefits of teenage and adult civilisation are as yet a mystery, and solitude in nature an ideal to be attained.

It is a beautiful story of childlike innocence, which could have been written only by a young child. The typescript was tragically destroyed in a house fire, recreated from memory, and published in 1927 when the author was 12. Barbara Newhall Follett was a child prodigy who first wrote this book at the age of 9 on her father's typewriter, with no intention of its being published.

I stumbled across her while procrastinatingly surfing Youtube and watching a video on famous people who disappeared. As recently as 48 hours ago, I had never heard of this book or author.

The house without windows by barbara newhall follett